


Lost and found

by Sani86



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23771890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sani86/pseuds/Sani86
Summary: Crowley does not read. No sir. At least, until he finds a notebook belonging to one A.Z. Fell in a B&B room.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 281
Collections: Good Omens Human AUs





	Lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a silly fluffy little thing I wrote because I'm feeling stuck on all my longer projects. Enjoy!

“Bloody buggering fuck” Anthony Crowley swore as the shoulder strap of his duffle bag gave way and the whole thing tumbled from his shoulder. Since Murphy seemed to be out to get him today, the bag promptly rolled down the steps he’d just climbed and landed in a freshly watered flowerbed, sending mud and petals flying. He gave a growl of frustration as he turned to make his way down the steps, cursing the bag, and the steps, and the stupid conference that brought him to this stupid nowhere town and this stupid B&B with its stupid flowerbeds. If that mud soaked through the bag and got on his clothes, he swore... 

His spill must have made a noise, because the door was suddenly opened by a middle-aged woman. “Is something wrong?” she asked with a concerned expression.

Crowley, having retrieved his bag, stood up and grunted, “Dropped my bag. Strap broke.” Realising he’d just wrecked her flowerbed, he quickly added, “Sorry about the flowers. You can add any damages to the bill.” After all, the office was footing the bill for this one; why should he care?

The woman looked him over, and understanding seemed to dawn. “Oh, you must be Mr. Crowley.” At Crowley’s nod, she continued, “I’m Tracey; I run this place.”

Crowley moved to shake her hand, but realised he was covered in mud. He grimaced, wiping the hand on a clean section of his bag.

“Oh, dear,” said Tracey. “Look at you, you’re a mess!” Crowley had to agree, unfortunately. His bag had smeared mud all down his one side. “Let’s get you your room key so that you can get cleaned up.”

Crowley grunted and followed her.

\---

Crowley closed the door behind Tracey and let out a sigh. Bloody perfect. He pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed a tired hand across his eyes. Well, at least he could take a shower, get cleaned up. Yes, that’s the ticket: a nice hot shower, change into comfy clothes, and spend the evening on the bed watching whatever happened to be on TV or, failing that, YouTube. Work could wait until tomorrow.

He pulled open the drawer of the bedside table and shoved his phone and wallet in there before heading to the bathroom.

Half an hour later, he was sitting on the bed in his boxers, idly flipping through the channels on the TV while contemplating whether he had time for a late afternoon nap, when a knock at the door startled him. “Just a minute,” he yelled, scrambling to at least put on some trousers.

It was Tracey at the door, unsurprisingly. “Oh, good, you’re all cleaned up now. I just wanted to come tell you, breakfast is served from 6 to 9 in the morning. We don’t serve dinner, but there’s a couple of places in town that will deliver here if you don’t want to go out. I brought you some menus.”

“Thanks,” said Crowley, taking the handful of papers from her.

“Is everything in the room all right?” she asked.

Crowley nodded. “Looks fine, yeah.”

“Good. If you need anything, just give me a call. Oh, before I forget: give me those muddy clothes. I’ll get them washed and ironed for you. And the bag too.”

“Um. Okay. Thanks,” said Crowley, somewhat stunned by this woman’s kindness. Then again, he supposed that was what they were paying this place for. He went to the bathroom to go fetch the offending articles.

After saying goodbye to Tracey (again), Crowley leafed idly through the brochures she’d given him. He found an Italian place that had a pizza-and-a-bottle-of-wine special, which looked acceptable. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but the wine sold it. He needed a drink after spending three hours on the bloody M25, and another two navigating through the country to this godforsaken hellhole. Now where did he put that bloody phone? Oh yes, the bedside table.

He yanked open the drawer a bit too enthusiastically, causing the whole thing to pull out of the cabinet and spill its contents on the floor. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he hissed. “What’s wrong with you today?”

He retrieved his phone, his wallet, his keys and the obligatory guest house Gideon’s bible. Except, when he took a closer look, it wasn’t a bible at all. It was a hardcover book, bound in dark blue, but it had no markings on the cover or spine. Curious, Crowley flipped through the pages. The book seemed to be about two-thirds full of handwritten notes. Strange thing to find in a B&B room, he mused. Left here by a previous guest, perhaps? A quick glance at the first page seemed to support this theory: the name A.Z. Fell was written in a flowing, cursive script, under a smaller and less ornamental ‘property of’. No address or telephone number, though. Fell couldn’t have been too worried about losing the book, then. He supposed he could mention it to Tracey in the morning; maybe she would know who the owner was. Crowley placed the book back on the bedside cabinet and reached for his phone to order dinner.

\---

A couple of hours and the best part of a bottle of wine later, his eye caught the book lying on the bedside table. Without really knowing why, he picked it up, turning it over and over. The edges of the cover were worn, and the spine bent in many places; the book had clearly been handled a lot. Oh well, his alcohol-addled brain decided, might as well satisfy your curiosity. What harm could it do? It’s not like he would ever meet the mysterious A.Z. Fell. Probably just full of grocery lists or appointments or such. He flipped open the first page.

What he found was a page of densely written prose, all in a handwriting so beautifully flowing that it might have been a font on his computer. Geez, who even wrote in cursive anymore? He read the first few sentences. It looked like a story, of sorts. Curious, he read on.

When he got to the end of the first page, he closed the book, using his finger to mark the page, and stared at the TV that was still playing in the background. Now look. Crowley wasn’t a big reader. He preferred to get his entertainment from a screen, thank you very much; doing something that required brainpower when you were supposed to be relaxing had always struck him as a bit pointless. The supremely dull books he’d been forced to read at school, all those many, many years ago, only cemented his belief that there was nothing of interest to be found in the fiction section of the library. But just at this moment, he wondered if he’d been missing out all along. Because this... this was... something else. Unable to help himself, he opened the book again, turned to the next page, and kept reading.

\---

Crowley groaned at the beeping of his phone’s alarm. He suddenly regretted finishing that entire bottle of wine while reading until well past midnight. What the fuck had he been thinking? He knew he’d have an early start, with the bloody conference starting at 8 am.

He rolled over in bed with a groan. Coffee, that’s the ticket. But then he recalled that he wasn’t at his own place; he couldn’t just stumble down the hall in his underwear in search of caffeine. So, clothes first. No, shower first, then clothes, _then_ coffee. He groaned again, and pulled the pillow over his head.

Five minutes later his phone beeped again. Crowley had long ago learned to set a series of alarms in the mornings. After you lose a job for sleeping through your alarm one too many times, you pick up these little tricks. He slapped his hand down on the phone, fiddling around until the noise stopped. He contemplated hiding away for a few more minutes, but his bladder was making some urgent demands, so he dragged himself out of bed with a resigned sigh.

Fifteen minutes later he was standing in the B&B’s dining room, hair still wet from the shower, clasping a cup of black coffee as if his life depended on it.

“Morning, Mr. Crowley,” Came Tracey’s cheerful voice behind him. “Sleep well?” she asked.

“Well enough,” he answered.

“What can I get you for breakfast? Today we have...” Crowley’s attention wandered as she listed their menu for the morning. He wasn’t really a breakfast person. “And if you like, I can get you a coffee to go. “ Now that caught Crowley’s attention.

“That would be perfect, actually,” he said. “I’ll grab it on my way out, if that’s okay?”

“No problem at all,” said Tracey with a smile. “I’ll leave you a travel mug by the coffee pot.”

“Thanks,” said Crowley, getting up and heading to said coffee pot for a refill. He took the second mug back to his room and sipped at it as he styled his hair and packed his bag for the day. As he reached out to grab his wallet, his gaze fell on the notebook lying on his bedside table. Oh, yeah, he forgot to ask Tracey about the mysterious Mr. Fell. He made a mental note about it (which he promptly forgot), and made his way out.

\---

Crowley dropped his laptop bag on the floor and collapsed on the bed. One day down, two to go. Ugh, he was tired. At least he’d had the foresight to stop and get something to eat before heading back to the guest house; with any luck, he wouldn’t have to move again before tomorrow.

He kicked off his shoes, shimmied out of his jeans and exchanged his slim fit dress shirt for the comfy old t-shirt he slept in. Ah, much better. He popped open the bottle of juice he’d bought – he wouldn’t be repeating last night’s mistake – and poured a glass, grabbed his food and settled himself on the bed.

He reached for the TV remote, but his hand landed on Fell’s notebook instead. Blasted thing was following him around, he thought somewhat irrationally. He would never admit it, but the book – the story it contained – had been lurking on the periphery of his mind all day. So much so that he’d resorted to Googling the name A.Z. Fell during one of the more boring presentations. That had not been particularly successful; the only reference to an A.Z. Fell he could find was a bookshop in London Soho, and that had been on a listing site. The place didn’t appear to have a website or even an email; the listing just had a street address and a land-line telephone number. Probably didn’t even exist anymore, if it was that far behind the times. So, no help there. It seemed that Google did not, in fact, have all the answers. He was back to having to ask Tracey.

Crowley spent a few moments debating the merits of reading versus watching TV. On the one hand, he was exhausted after his day. But on the other hand, he was dying to know what would happen in Fell’s story. And if he didn’t finish it now, he’d probably never get the chance. Ah, screw it, he thought, as he picked up the book. There was nothing on the TV that he couldn’t catch on Netflix.

He was perhaps two-thirds through the book when he caught himself slipping sideways out of the bed. He realised he’d started to fall asleep while reading, and nearly fell out of the bed. Conceding defeat, he placed a scrap of paper in the book to mark his place and surrendered to sleep.

\---

The morning was a bit better than the previous one; at least Crowley didn’t have the aftereffects of a bottle of wine to deal with. He was pouring his takeaway coffee when Tracey came into the dining room. “Oh, Mr. Crowley! I’m glad I caught you! I’ve had a very distressed phone call from the last person who stayed in your room. Seems he’s lost a notebook and he thinks he may have left it here. You haven’t seen anything like that, by any chance?”

Crowley felt an unfamiliar... something happening in his chest. The writer!

“No,” he lied, “Can’t say that I have. But, erm, I’ll have a look for it, let you know if I find anything.”

The notebook in question was, in fact, in the bag he had slung over his shoulder, but Tracey did _not_ need to know that. He just wanted to finish reading the story, that’s all. He’d give it back to Tracey tonight, say he found it after she asked him about it. Plausible deniability, right?

“Oh please do,” Tracey went on, unaware of Crowley’s secret. “The poor man was so distressed. I’m sure he has it, though – he left here with stacks of books, it must have gotten mixed in.”

“Books?” asked Crowley dumbly.

“Oh yes, he had boxes of the things. Came up for the big auction at the manor the last week; I’m sure he left with half a library. No idea what anyone would want so many books for, but it takes all kinds, I suppose.”

“Hmm,” said Crowley vaguely. Fell. Books. The bookshop he’d found on his less-than-fruitful Google search. Could it be...?

Tracey was staring at him, clearly waiting for an answer.

“Sorry, what was that?” he said. “Mind was wandering a bit.”

“I said, I’ve got your clothes and bag back, all good as new. Can I go get them for you?”

“Thanks, but can I grab them from you this evening? I’ve got to run or I’ll be late.”

“Of course, dearie. Off you go.”

“Thanks again,” he said over his shoulder as he rushed out to his car. He had some homework to do!

The morning presentations were, surprisingly, quite interesting, and Crowley didn’t get a chance to continue reading his story. During the tea break, he googled A.Z. Fell again, and came up with the same listing he’d found the previous day and nothing else. How to find out if the place was for real? He didn’t want to phone. God knows, that would be a weird conversation: “Hi, I found your notebook and tracked you down on Google.” No, that would be... creepy. Plan B then: this was the twentieth century, after all. He punched the address into Google maps, clicked on street view, and there it was: a storefront on a corner in Soho, painted in burgundy with the words “A.Z. Fell & Co” over the front door and “Antiquarian and Unusual Books” off to the side. Well, that explained the binge-buying at the auction, at least; he must have been stocking up.

A bell chimed, announcing that the presentations were about to resume, and Crowley hurried off to take his seat. Further furtive Google searches on his phone failed to yield any more information on A.Z. Fell and Co, except for a very unflattering review on Yelp. By lunch time, Crowley had given up the fight. He grabbed his lunch and took himself off to an isolated table to read in peace.

After the conference ended for the day, a couple of acquaintances persuaded him to go out for a drink. He wasn’t really in the mood, but they just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and so they all ended up at a bar in town. One drink soon turned into several, and dinner, and by the time Crowley was headed back to the guest house he was thoroughly tired and more than a little tipsy. Back in his room, he threw his bag on the floor carelessly as he toed off his shoes. The notebook slipped out of it, catching his attention. Shit, he still wasn’t finished, and he’d have to give it to Tracey tomorrow. Unless...

The idea hit him with all the brilliance that a night of drinking could produce. He could take it back to Fell himself! Yes! He knew where to find him now, didn’t he? He opened up the browser tab on his phone again: yep, there it was: A.Z. Fell’s address and telephone number. Had to be him.

He stole a glance at his watch. 9 pm. The shop would surely be closed now, right? So, if he were to phone now, he could maybe get a voicemail service, and at least he’d know if he was on the right track. Made perfect sense. Right? At his current blood alcohol level, it seemed like a perfectly logical plan, and he hit the call button.

He listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times. And then, to his surprise, the phone was answered. “A.Z. Fell and Co; I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we are most definitely closed.” The voice was melodious, cultured – and most definitely _not_ a pre-recorded voicemail message. “Hello?” came the voice again.

“Fuck,” hissed Crowley, slamming the disconnect button. What the heaven was the man doing in the shop at this time of night? “You are a bloody idiot, Crowley,” he scolded himself, sagging back on the bed.

\---

The next morning, he was back to where he’d been two days earlier: throat parched, head throbbing, and irritable with sleep deprivation. Oh, and out of clean trousers; Tracey still had his other things. He pulled on yesterday’s trousers and a t-shirt and went in search of her.

“Did you have a look for that notebook?” she asked as she handed over the freshly laundered pile.

“Oh, yeah,” Crowley stuttered. He couldn’t give it back now! He still had probably thirty pages to go, and he would go crazy wondering what happened. “Um. No, sorry. No luck.”

“Thought as much,” smiled Tracy. “I’ll let poor Mr. Fell know. Coffee?”

“Please,” said Crowley, grabbing the proffered mug and rushing back to his room, too ashamed to look Tracey in the eye. Since when was he a liar and a thief?

Crowley checked out of the B&B before he left that morning; the conference would end after lunch and he would be leaving for home straight afterwards. The notebook was still in his bag, burning him through several layers of fabric, but he just couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind. He would go to A.Z. Fell & Co, he reasoned. Hand it over. Or, he supposed, make a fool of himself if he had the wrong guy; in which case he’d return it to Tracey with some plausible story. There, hardly a misdemeanour at all.

Crowley spent the morning tea break with his nose deep in the notebook, but still couldn’t quite finish before the conference presentations resumed. He didn’t hear a single word that was said in the second half of the morning, reading furtively under the table. He was getting near the end now, he knew it; the story was clearly building to some sort of climax. He was, quite literally, on the edge of his seat; captivated in a way no story had ever managed before. He turned the page and... nothing. He paged back again, rubbed the page between his thumb and forefinger to make sure he hadn’t accidentally taken two pages at once. Dammit! The story wasn’t finished!

He looked up to see that the lady sitting in the next seat over was glaring at him. Shit, did he curse out loud? “Sorry,” he mouthed, giving her an apologetic sort of smile. The speaker seemed to be in the middle of the closing address, thanking the presenters and waffling on about nothing of very great importance. What the hell, though Crowley, he might as well leave now; he wouldn’t be missing anything important. He jammed his things into his bags and made his way to his car.

Once there, he set up Google maps to take him back to his flat in Mayfair – with his sense of direction, he didn’t dare to navigate without some sort of sat nav, lest he end up in Scotland or the English Channel. According to his phone, he would arrive home just after 4. Perfect.

But then he thought again. He grabbed his phone and punched in a new destination: A.Z. Fell and Co.

\---

Crowley stood on the front step of A.Z. Fell & Co, notebook in hand. He took a deep breath and pushed it open. A tinkly sort of bell announced his entry, and from somewhere between the maze of shelves a voice piped up, “Be with you in a minute.” Some part of his brain vaguely registered the voice as the same one that had answered the phone last night, but most of his attention was focused on the scene around him. He turned a slow circle, taking it all in. Books, and books, and more books – honestly, Crowley had been in libraries with fewer books. Books on the shelves, books on randomly placed little tables, books on the... was that a sofa? Even the floor was half-covered in precariously leaning towers of books. Crowley peered at the closest shelf: Romeo and Juliet, Eat Pray Love, some sort of ancient treatise on the trees of Northern Ireland. What the fuck? Were the books just randomly shoved in anywhere?

“Can I help you?” asked Fell’s voice behind him, startling him so much he actually jumped and yelped a little. He turned around, a sharp word already half-formed on his tongue, but then suddenly found himself incapable of any speech at all. Because there, looking at him with an expression that was equal parts amusement and concern, was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said the beautiful man with the beautiful smile and the beautiful twinkling eyes. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Ngk,” Crowley managed. The beautiful man was lit up by the sun streaming in through the window behind him, lighting up his blonde curls like a golden halo, and oh, didn’t he just look like an angel?

“Mneugh,” Crowley tried again. Nope, vocal cords still aren’t cooperating. He swallowed, cleared his throat.

“You Fell?” he managed. Oh brilliant, idiot. Real smooth.

“I am,” answered the angel. When nothing else was forthcoming, he added, “Was there something specific you wanted? Only, I’m just about to close up for the day.”

Crowley decided that speaking coherently was probably a lost cause for now, so he waved the notebook at Fell. He was still trying to form the words “Is this yours?” when Fell grabbed the book from his hand, eagerly flipping it open.

The smile that bloomed on Fell’s face when he recognised the writing could have lit up London for a week. “Oh, I was worried I’d lost this forever! Oh, thank you so much, my dear!”

“’s nothing,” Crowley managed, trying not to stare.

“It most certainly isn’t nothing! This is... well, it’s very important to me. Oh, how can I ever thank you, Mr...?”

“Crowley,” he answered the obvious question.

“Well, Mr. Crowley, I’m most grateful. How can I make it up to you? I would be more than happy to give you a reward...”

“Dinner,” managed Crowley.

“I’m sorry?” said Fell

“Have dinner with me. You can tell me how the story ends.”

“The story?”

“Yes, that one,” said Crowley, gesturing to the notebook in Fell’s hand. “It isn’t finished. I’m dying to know how it ends.”

“You read my notebook?” There was an edge in Fell’s voice that hadn’t been there before. For the first time, Crowley had an inkling that poking around in someone else’s private notebook might not be well received.

“Um. Yeah. I was looking for an address or a telephone number or something, and, well, I sorta got pulled in.”

“You. read. My. Notebook. My _private_ notebook. Do you have any idea?!” Fell was quite red in the face now, every trace of his earlier joy gone. He looked murderous.

“Geez, sorry mate.” Crowley raised his hands apologetically. “I didn’t think it would be an issue. Didn’t even mean to read it. Fuck, I hate reading, haven’t read a book since high school. But, well, I’d had rather a lot of wine, and I was curious. And then, about two pages in, I was hooked.”

“You were?” Fell was looking a bit less mad, and a lot more nonplussed now, as if he couldn’t imagine Crowley being interested in what he wrote.

“Couldn’t put the damn thing down. Spent most of the last three days reading it, and then...”

Crowley was interrupted by a loud “Three days? You’ve had my book for _three days?_ And you only bring it back now?!” Oops. Fell was back to be full-on avenging angel mode now.

“Whoa, who, hold on. You didn’t exactly make it easy to find you. You could have put a phone number or an address or something in that book if it’s so bloody special.” Crowley was getting annoyed with this. You do someone a favour, and this is what you get? “And I was out of town, I’ll have you know,” he added. “Got back to London what, fifteen minutes ago. Haven’t even been home; just came straight over with your bloody notebook. So if you’re quite done yelling at me, I’ll be going.” He turned on his heel, ready to storm out the door.

He was interrupted by a hand on his elbow. “Wait, don’t go. Not like that.”

Crowley turned back to Fell, raised an eyebrow inquiringly. The man was giving him a forlorn sort of look.

“Really, I truly am thankful that you went through the trouble of tracking me down. And I’m sorry for yelling. It’s just...” Fell was fiddling nervously with the notebook. “This is... private. It’s just for me. I’ve never let anyone else read it.”

“Why the hell not?” interrupted Crowley. “Look, I’m sorry for snooping, I can see now that it was a spectacularly arsehole thing to do, but seriously. That,” he pointed at the notebook, “is incredible.”

“You really think so?” Fell asked, his voice tentative.

“Yeah,” said Crowley, trying his best to smile reassuringly. “I wasn’t joking, I don’t read storybooks, but I literally _stole that thing from Tracey_ so that I could finish it.”

“Tracey?” asked Aziraphale. “I knew it!” And then, “You stole it?”

“Mmmnyeah, I might have told her I didn’t see a notebook lying around because I wanted to finish reading it first.”

“You fiend! I can’t believe you’d do that!” Fell actually laughed as he said this, and oh! If Crowley thought his smile was bright, it couldn’t begin to compete with that laugh. It warmed him right down to his bones.

“So, am I forgiven?” Crowley chanced.

“Perhaps,” said Fell, coyly. Bloody hell, he was cute.

“Well, let me take you for dinner. As... recompense, of sorts. What do you say?” Crowley gave Fell his most winning smile.

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“Nope,” said Crowley, popping the p. “Is it working?”

“Oh, all right then, I guess I’ll have to force myself,” said Fell, with a smile that didn’t look put upon in the slightest. “Let me just lock up.”


End file.
